PUBLICATIONS

Professor Helliker has co-edited two books published by Routledge Press (2018):

The Political Economy of Livelihoods in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Edited by Kirk Helliker, Manase Chiweshe and Sandra Bhatasara

Politics at a Distance from the State: Radical and African Perspectives

Edited by Kirk Helliker and Lucien van der Walt

1. The Political Economy of Livelihoods in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Since the introduction of the fast track land reform programme in 2000, Zimbabwe has undergone major economic and political shifts and these have had a profound impact on both urban and rural livelihoods. This book provides rich empirical studies that examine a range of multi-faceted and contested livelihoods within the context of systemic crises. Taking a broad political economy approach, the chapters advance a grounded and in-depth understanding of emerging and shifting livelihood processes, strategies and resilience that foregrounds agency at household level.

Highlighting an emergent scholarship amongst young black scholars in Zimbabwe, and providing an understanding of how people and communities respond to socio-economic challenges, this book is an important read for scholars of African political economy, southern African studies and livelihoods.

Chapter 1: Introduction – Theorising the Political Economy of Livelihoods in Contemporary Zimbabwe

Chapter 11: "Let Them Starve so that they ‘Hear’ us" – Differing Perspectives on Unresolved Land Occupations and Livelihoods at Mushandike Smallholder Irrigation Scheme, Masvingo District

Jonathan Mafukidze

Chapter 12: "Other People Inherit Property, But I Inherit People and Their Problems" – The Role of Kinship and Social Capital in Providing Care and Support for the HIV Infected and AIDS Affected, Chivanhu Informal Settlement, Masvingo Province

Loveness Makonese

Chapter 13: Insecure Land Tenure and Natural Resource Use in a Post-Fast Track Area of Zimbabwe

Takunda Chabata

Chapter 14: Fast Track Land Reform Programme and Women in Goromonzi District

Loveness Chakona and Manase Kudzai Chiweshe

2. Politics at a Distance from the State: Radical and African Perspectives

For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements identified radical transformation with capturing state power. The collapse of these statist projects from the 1970s led to a global crisis of left and working class politics. But crisis has also opened space for rediscovering alternative society-centred, anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, operating at a distance from the state. These have registered important successes in practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and Rojava in Syria. They have been a key influence on movements from Occupy in United States, to the landless in Latin America, to anti-austerity struggles in Europe and Asia, to urban movements in Africa. Their lineages include anarchism, syndicalism, autonomist Marxism, philosophers like Alain Badiou, and radical popular praxis. This path-breaking volume recovers this understanding of social transformation, long side-lined but now resurgent, like a seed in the soil that keeps breaking through and growing. It provides case studies with reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe, and includes a dossier of key texts from a century of anarchists, syndicalists, insurgent unionists and anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. Originating in an African summit of radical academics, struggle veterans and social movements, the book includes a preface from John Holloway.

Preface: at a distance from the state

John Holloway

1. Politics at a distance from the state: radical, South African and Zimbabwean praxis today

Kirk Helliker and Lucien van der Walt

2. Constructing the domain of freedom: thinking politics at a distance from the state

Michael Neocosmos

3. Back to the future: revival, relevance and route of an anarchist/syndicalist approach for twenty-first-century left, labour and national liberation movements